Retail stores carry a wide variety of products. Some of these products spoil or become otherwise unusable over time.
To take one example, a grocery store typically has various types of produce that is available for purchase. For instance, most grocery store sell fruit and vegetables. However, over time this produce becomes spoiled and unusable. If the products are not removed after they have become spoiled, it is possible that the products are purchased and consumed by customers. This can lead to problems such as consumers becoming ill after ingesting the product, the customer developing a negative impression of the shopping experience or the retail store, and/or reduced sales for the store.
In one particular example of these problems, online orders of produce are supported by some retail stores. However, some spoiled produce may be present in the bins of the store. This bad produce can be selected by employees of the store to fulfill online orders. Consequently, some produce picked for online orders may be unsatisfactory to customers, and, as a result, some customers may be reluctant to order produce online, and sales at the retail store are lost or reduced.
Current approaches for removing unusable products rely upon store employees to manually monitor the condition of the products. Unfortunately, store employees typically have many more tasks to perform, sometimes forgetting to monitor the products, or only occasionally monitor the products. Further, spoilage of products often occurs quickly requiring employees to remove the product quickly and not wait for a convenient time to perform the removal. All of these problems leads to spoiled products being present and available to customers for purchase.
Elements in the figures are illustrated for simplicity and clarity and have not necessarily been drawn to scale. For example, the dimensions and/or relative positioning of some of the elements in the figures may be exaggerated relative to other elements to help to improve understanding of various embodiments of the present invention. Also, common but well-understood elements that are useful or necessary in a commercially feasible embodiment are often not depicted in order to facilitate a less obstructed view of these various embodiments of the present invention. Certain actions and/or steps may be described or depicted in a particular order of occurrence while those skilled in the art will understand that such specificity with respect to sequence is not actually required. The terms and expressions used herein have the ordinary technical meaning as is accorded to such terms and expressions by persons skilled in the technical field as set forth above except where different specific meanings have otherwise been set forth herein.